Your mood feels low. Your energy is drained. It’s an effort to do everyday things. Perhaps it’s an effort to even think about doing things. It feels like wading through mud as you drag yourself through the day.
Oh, for a fairy godmother to wave her wand and make you feel better! You want her to fill up your energy tank, then add a good dash of joy and fun, so your life can sparkle again!
Imagine a glass of water with some debris in it. The debris makes it dull; for it to sparkle again you need to remove the debris.
There are two ways you could do this: use a sieve to filter off the debris, or run a tap into the glass until it overflows and washes the debris away.
Keys to upping your mood
1. Filter off the debris
The debris represents low energy feelings, such as apathy, grief and fear. When you’re in a low mood it’s very easy to confuse your feelings with your sense of yourself. So you might find yourself saying “I’m so apathetic today”, rather than the more accurate observation “I feel apathetic today”.
Do you notice the subtle difference between these statements? Recognising apathy as just a feeling starts to empower you right away.
Feelings should be like clouds in the sky – passing by. It’s your choice whether or not you hold onto them.
To filter off a negative feeling:
- Allow the feeling to be present for the moment
- Ask yourself “Could I let it this feeling go?” (‘Yes’ and ‘No’ responses are both fine)
- Repeat the question and your response, until the feeling has gone.
That feeling has now gone for ever; if you sense it again it’s more of the feeling surfacing ready to be released.
Repeat the process for the next negative feeling which surfaces, and so on until your mood has risen.
2. Flush out the debris
With this approach, you drink positive feelings into your heart, until they flush out the negative ones.
- Settle into a quiet, comfortable place.
- Drop your awareness from your mind into your heart space.
- Ask the Universe to fill your heart up with positive feelings, such as joy, love, peace or any other feeling that’s appropriate for you.
- Visualise your heart drinking in these qualities, until you feel replete.
Then notice how your mood has risen.
I like to use a combination of the two methods because if I get stuck with one, I just switch to the other. Filtlering is an active, yang, masculine approach, which can be balanced with flushing, which is a more receptive, feminine, yin way. However, if you find one more appealing, that’s the one to try.
Do it your way!
You may find yourself evolving your own variation. Here’s what my husband came up with after reading just the first four paragraphs of this Article.
“I visualise a tall glass of polluted river water sitting on a lab bench, and well above it is a tap. When I turn on the tap on a beautiful column of clean water drops into the bottom of the beaker. The beaker quickly fills with clear water from the bottom up, and overflows washing the muck out of the glass and leaving everything clean and bright.
This took about half a minute, and I was astonished at how quickly my mood lifted as the clear water rose up the glass.”
